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Shaunaka Rishi Das, head of Oxford Hindu Centre, on Hindu thought in Western literature - goes into detail on the Indian influence on Pythagoras onwards. Long talk. Get a coffee, settle down and be prepared for a little surprise in the beginning (if you don't know already).

In order to prove that Sanskrit and/or Sanskrit-related languages came to India from elsewhere, the historians had to build their language dispersal model keeping a few constraints in mind:

One has to show the existence of Sanskrit and/or Sanskrit-related languages outside India at an earlier date than in India

1) This information is only available through inscriptions, texts available elsewhere, which can be dated [written: Mitanni texts; oral: sound change laws, PIE] [Language]

2) This information can be eluded to by showing Sanskrit-based Vedics to be having a memory of a culture based on a life in a different region, which again means showing that aspects of that life could not have been available in India prior to their arrival, and that these life styles were available elsewhere before that [horses, horse sacrifice, rivers with similar names, mythology overlap...] [Culture]

3) This claim can also be proven by showing ancestors of those people in India, who can be overwhelmingly be associated with "Aryan" roots to have had their forefathers from elsewhere, who too have a "Aryan" culture [R1a1a Hpg among higher "castes" to be shown as derived] [Ancestry]

RajeshA wrote:2) This information can be eluded to by showing Sanskrit-based Vedics to be having a memory of a culture based on a life in a different region, which again means showing that aspects of that life could not have been available in India prior to their arrival, and that these life styles were available elsewhere before that [horses, horse sacrifice, rivers with similar names, mythology overlap...] [Culture]

The problem about the epic fail of cunning-linguists is that they selectively chose to believe old texts where they refer to convenient things they like such as pine trees and snow. But the choose to ignore other things like astronomical dates. The minute you look at those dates - it screws up everything they say about language because those dates are simply unavailable to western history and archaeology, let alone linguisitics.

Based on this paper, i came across an argument in favor of AIT from MT cult. It says though diversification of R1a-M420 was in vicinity of Iran around 5800 YBP, this doesnt mean invasion or entry of r1a in India.But jUST date of diversified. Invasion happened later around 1500 BC.

gandharva wrote:Based on this paper, i came across an argument in favor of AIT from MT cult. It says though diversification of R1a-M420 was in vicinity of Iran around 5800 YBP, this doesnt mean invasion or entry of r1a in India.But jUST date of diversified. Invasion happened later around 1500 BC.

Just thinking aloud:If Invasion happened later but this genetic diversification doesn't state that or proves that, they should present something that proves that conclusively than make a conjecture and say it might have happened later around 1500 BC. What proves the later date? just going around in circles.

gandharva wrote:Based on this paper, i came across an argument in favor of AIT from MT cult. It says though diversification of R1a-M420 was in vicinity of Iran around 5800 YBP, this doesnt mean invasion or entry of r1a in India.But jUST date of diversified. Invasion happened later around 1500 BC.

This paper was discussed several pages ago. What invasion happened around 1500 BC? That is a lie. Please provide some evidence. There have been plenty of migrations into India starting from more than 10,000 years ago. But you speak of an invasion around 1500 BC. No evidence of such an invasion has even been shown by anyone. What is worse, the linking of such an invasion to language spread is completely fake.

The more I look at this issue the more I see that the "Invasionists" are clutching at straws and obfuscating - holding on to any evidence of any migration into India around 1500 BC and calling it invasion and avoiding the inconvenient fact that it was supposed to be an "Aryan" invasion of people with superior language and technology. What superior language? What superior technology? Where is the evidence? Absence of evidence may not be evidence of absence, but the persistent uncovering of contradicting evidence increasingly shows up the Aryan Invasion/migration story as cooked up by wannabes and promoted by an increasingly desperate group of people clutching on to fake history.

One definition of a lie is an assertion that cannot be backed up by verifiable facts. Interestingly the word "verify" has its roots on the Latin word veritas which means truth. The entire Aryan invasion story including any support that Shri Manasataramgini (why do people refer to him as MT? Is it laziness?) may now be desperately trying to scrape out of new genetics papers is a load of crock which does not have an iota of verifiable fact to support that a group of people brought language to India around 1500 BC. I think low self esteem Indians need to wake up, discard this bullshit and move on. There may be things to learn. We cannot attempt to uncover new things if we spend our entire lives trying to rebut a bunch of pathetic liars whose only job in life is to keep repeating a dead story. is our self esteem so low that we need to keep on worrying that someone or the other supports AIT?

It means that a string that used to have 4 Gs in a row got zapped in a mutation and became 3 Gs in a row. The particular G that got zapped is marked by that position number and is clearly marked on the image I have posted. You can see 4 Gs in a row and the symbol M17 under the last G on the right.

While G binds to C or A to T, there is no law that 2 or 4 or 72 or 420 or 786 Gs cannot be strung together in one row on one strand of DNA. That is how you get 4 Gs in a row

The information is useless for this discussion but I will keep posting replies as long as I find it entertaining. I would not recommend this forum for learning about genetics and I just wonder what point you are trying to prove by persistently bashing one arcane point posted by someone and saying you don;t understand. Sometimes that could be trolling. It should be possible to find out whether you want to learn or want to troll based on who or what you look at as a source of credible information. IMHO. You know that this forum cannot be the place to learn about genetics.

Trolling eh? Let us keep the environment cool and not point fingers please.

*********Ashi (aši) is the Avestan language word for the Zoroastrian concept of "that which is attained." As the hypostasis of "reward," "recompense," or "capricious luck," Ashi is also a divinity in the Zoroastrian hierarchy of yazatas.

NomenclatureAvestan 'ashi' is a feminine abstract noun, deriving from the root ar-, "to allot," with a substantivizing -ta suffix, hence aši/arti "that which is granted." In the Avesta, the term implies both material and spiritual recompense.

Although conceptually older than Zoroastrianism, Ashi has no attested equivalent in Vedic Sanskrit. The late Middle Persian equivalent as attested in the Zoroastrian texts of the 9th-12th century is ard-, which is subject to confusion with another ard for aša- "truth".

In the younger Avesta, divinified Ashi is also referred to Ashi Vanuhi or Ashi Vanghuhi (Aši vaηuhī, nominative Ašiš vaηuhī "Good Reward"), the Middle Persian equivalent of which is Ahrishwang (Ahrišwang). Ashi is also attested as a dvandvah compound as Ashi Vanghuhi-Parendi.

In scriptureIn Zoroaster's revelation

Avestan ashi is already attested in the Gathas, the oldest texts of the Zoroastrianism and believed to have been composed by Zarathushtra himself. In these hymns, where the term occurs 17 times, ashi is still an abstract concept and is not yet the divinity that she would become in the younger Avesta. With the adjective "good" (hence -vanuhi), ashi occurs thrice.

In the Gathas, ashi is frequently identified with asha "truth", so for instance in Yasna 51.10 where the poet calls "truth to [him], to come with good reward." The idea being expressed here is a soteriological one, with "truth" being connected to the afterlife (see asha for details) and ashi being the appropriate recompense for the soul after death (cf. ashavan). This is also apparent in Yasna 43.5 where Ahura Mazda appoints "reward for deed and word: bad for the bad, good reward for the good." Subject to proper conduct in life, ashi is then tied to Zoroaster's concept of free will, evident for instance in Yasna 50.9 where a mortal has the power to influence his own reward.

Both asha and ashi have associations with Sraosha and Vohu Manah. Sraosha even has ashi as an epithet, he is ashivant, "possessing ashi" and obedience (=Sraosha) to Ahura Mazda brings good reward, which is "good thinking" (=Vohu Manah).

In the younger AvestaIn the younger Avesta, Ashi is unambiguous a divinity, particularly so in the hymn (Yasht 17) dedicated to her. This hymn also contains older material, and many of the verses of Yasht 17 are also found in Yasht 5, the hymn nominally invoking "the Waters" (Aban), but actually addressed to Aredvi Sura Anahita. Both Aredvi Sura and Ashi are divinities of fertility, but other verses that have martial characteristics (see below) appear out of place in a hymn to "the Waters".

As the divinity of fortune, Ashi is characterized as one who confers victory in time of battle (Yasht 17.12-13). She is also closely connected to Mithra, whom she serves as charioteer (Yasht 10.68). In the hymn to Sraosha, the divinity of obedience receives ashiio (of uncertain meaning) as a stock epithet.Three verses of the Ard Yasht are devoted to enumerating the various kings and heroes who paid devotion to Ashi (17.23-25) and were rewarded for it. Verse 53 of the same hymn enumerates those who do not receive her favors, and this includes - besides demons - all youths that have not yet reached puberty. This is followed by two later verses (55-56) that recall a tale of Ashi hiding beneath a rock when pursued, only to be uncovered by prepubescent boys and girls. The last three verses (57-59) of the hymn describe Ashi complaining to Ahura Mazda for the shame she feels for the "prostitute's" actions (cf. Jahi).In the day-name dedications of the Zoroastrian calendar, Ashi presides over the 25th day of the month (Siroza 25).

IconographyOn Kushan coins, Ashi ppears as Ardoxšo with a cornucopia in hand.

*********

In Sanskrit we have words like

āśīrvāda: blessings, benediction

āśīṣa: blessing

āśā: hope (of something positive)

artha: economic and social progress

But for some reason, "Ashi has no attested equivalent in Vedic Sanskrit"!

One of the biggest heists that AIT-Nazis have played is to treat Indians and old Iranians as ethnically, linguistically and to some extent culturally, as two different people, with Indian tribes and Iranian tribes as mutually exclusive. That is why one keeps on hearing group x y z came to India from the Northwest!!! India's Northwest WAS India also!

What has happened is that due to the arrival of Turks in Central Asia from the East and more importantly due to spread of Islam in West and Central Asia as well as a different colonial history, there has entered a cultural discontinuity among the people there and India, and the West has used this cultural discontinuity and memory loss in order to claim "ownership" over the ancient history in the whole region, basically shutting out India from having any part in the historical research and debate.

This has given the European supremacist-"historians" the chance to write and twist the history of the region and of India as and how they like, all to the detriment of Bhārata.

Rajesh - anything that is claimed about Avestan is fake. Avestan language itself is fake. Linguists took a Sanskrit text and "reconstructed" Avestan and probably used their nonsensical "sound change" laws that are cooked up at every step to create a new language which they said was 3000 years old. This is a huge linguistic lie that needs to be taken down.

shiv wrote:Rajesh - anything that is claimed about Avestan is fake. Avestan language itself is fake. Linguists took a Sanskrit text and "reconstructed" Avestan and probably used their nonsensical "sound change" laws that are cooked up at every step to create a new language which they said was 3000 years old. This is a huge linguistic lie that needs to be taken down.

Shiv,

Are you suggesting that this was done (by simply imposing whatever letters/accents/sounds/) on what they found as 'Avesta', in very much same style with what they plausibly did with 'Cuniform texts' of Mittani/Hittite ?

shiv wrote:Rajesh - anything that is claimed about Avestan is fake. Avestan language itself is fake. Linguists took a Sanskrit text and "reconstructed" Avestan and probably used their nonsensical "sound change" laws that are cooked up at every step to create a new language which they said was 3000 years old. This is a huge linguistic lie that needs to be taken down.

Shiv,

Are you suggesting that this was done (by simply imposing whatever letters/accents/sounds/) on what they found as 'Avesta', in very much same style with what they plausibly did with 'Cuniform texts' of Mittani/Hittite ?

Yes. Fortunately I found one page of a book that describes what they did. (There are multiple sources that are easily located - but one page is rare) Since the hymns (Gathas) were known only orally and the written texts were from the 13th century and that to written in a Sanskrit source text they had no idea what the language was like. So they "reconstructed" the way Bush reconstructed Iraq. They took a 13th century text that has been transcribed in various languages and then cooked up "Avestan" which they claimed was the language spoken 2500 years previously by "undoing" sound changes that they imagined must have occurred in 2500 years. No sane researcher would believe this shit But this is what is being passed off as OUR history

I will also try and locate a ref I have about Michael "Linguistic Masterchef" Witzel lamenting that if only Sanskrit had not been the source language to reconstruct Avestan.

I made the following post earlier - but am stll trying to find the Witzel source document

Even Witzel garu points out that Avestan's utility becomes limited because all knowledge of Avestan has come via knowledge of Sanskrit. As for Old Iranian, the language was deciphered only because of knowledge of Sanskrit. The phonology of Avestan and old Iranian is inextricably linked to the phonology of the Sanskrit used in decipherment or translation. So cooking up a proto language from the phonology of three instances based on Sanskrit should give you Sanskrit onlee as proto Indo-Iranian.

1) Avesta is written in a Sanskrit-like language2) Avesta cannot be understood/translated without Sanskrit3) Therefore Avestan is a different language, that's older than Sanskrit4) QED

Are there features in "Avestan" that makes linguists believe that "Avestan" is older? Like older phonetic forms, palatalization etc? Reason I ask is that, based on Talageri's work, Avesta is contemporaneous with the later-books of Rig Veda & with Atharva Veda.

shiv wrote:I made the following post earlier - but am stll trying to find the Witzel source document

Even Witzel garu points out that Avestan's utility becomes limited because all knowledge of Avestan has come via knowledge of Sanskrit. As for Old Iranian, the language was deciphered only because of knowledge of Sanskrit. The phonology of Avestan and old Iranian is inextricably linked to the phonology of the Sanskrit used in decipherment or translation. So cooking up a proto language from the phonology of three instances based on Sanskrit should give you Sanskrit onlee as proto Indo-Iranian.

Shiv

Any luck with finding (hard drive) PDF of JM Chatterjee's book on Avesta?

1) Avesta is written in a Sanskrit-like language2) Avesta cannot be understood/translated without Sanskrit3) Therefore Avestan is a different language, that's older than Sanskrit4) QED

Are there features in "Avestan" that makes linguists believe that "Avestan" is older? Like older phonetic forms, palatalization etc? Reason I ask is that, based on Talageri's work, Avesta is contemporaneous with the later-books of Rig Veda & with Atharva Veda.

Talageri's work is unnecessary. Jatindra Mohan Chaterji and Parsi sources I have read are clear that Atharva Veda and Parsi Gathas are from a common source.

Phonology is a load of crock as applied by linguists because they arbitrarily say some sounds are older.Even if Talageri makes phonological arguments I can only compliment him for taking the battle to the other side using the same fakeological methods used by linguists to create languages and dates for them That apart - how can you talk about phonology of a language that existed 2500 years before any available text of which only 25% now available and in Persian, Sanskrit and Gujarati. Everything is pure guesswork. The Parsis speak Gujarati now. They used to speak "Old Persian" (like Sanskrit) at the time of Darius (Behistun) in Iran. Earlier than that they had a language. It was never called Avestan. So where did the name Avestan come from? I can explain that but will omit that bit now.

There is no language called Avestan other than that cooked up by linguists. There was a Zoroastrian language and anyone who hears old Gathas and also knows the Vedas or Sanskrit can instantly see the similarity. Once you cook up a language from modern texts by removing some sounds or cooking up new sounds that "must have existed" anything is possible. You can declare it older, younger yet to come in future or whatever. The gathas as heard today have not been preserved like Vedas with no sound change. They could have been Sanskrit only. Iran and Northwest India were one contiguous civilization with genetic links (M 420 and Z93) and cultural links up to Andronovo, BMAC and Syria and Israel

Talking about age of Avestan is a bogey. Avestan is not a basis for any AIT/OIT argument. A fictitious cooked up language cannot be used to describe our history. Avestan should not be used in any argument in this connection because it is fiction cooked up to suit AIT and is not supported by any fact outside of linguistic cookery. The history of the Zoroastrians, Iranians or Indians or Greeks does not include the word Avesta or Avestan anywhere. It is totally and completely cooked up by cunning linguists. The history of the Zoroastrians, Iranians or Indians can be described without any reference to any Avestan language. That fake language, like Hittite is needed only for AIT.

shiv wrote:Once you cook up a language from modern texts by removing some sounds or cooking up new sounds that "must have existed" anything is possible. You can declare it older, younger yet to come in future or whatever. The gathas as heard today have not been preserved like Vedas with no sound change. They could have been Sanskrit only.

More like Sanskrit words imported and garbled into a Prakrit, like any prakrit. Like how Krishna becomes Kishen, or Indra becomes Inder.

E.g., Sanskrit प्रसोकृति (praso krti) becomes Avestan "frasho kereti". Did a crisp "krti" become a loose "kereti" in a people with an inability to pronounce conjuncts, or the other way round?

If you imbibe a lot of alcohol or snort enough heroin and try to pronounce Sanskrit words, you'll get 'Avestan'.

More likely 'Avestan' was a Prakrit under a pan-Indic Sankritic civilization. And like all participating Prakrits, there must have been a two-way flow - with those languages contributing words to Sanskrit and in turn borrowing from the lexicon of crystallized words contributed by all participants.

please do finish your book! I am sure it would be very valuable in putting some sense into the "AIT" debate.

I second it.

Here is audio clips of 'so called' Avesta.

Listen to few of them (those who have not), especially longer ones. And if you are used to listening (or even better yet.. reciting yourself) Purushosukta, Sri Sukta and such Veda-Path, it is easy to see how close it is, in tonality, but also many (many) words.

1) Avesta is written in a Sanskrit-like language2) Avesta cannot be understood/translated without Sanskrit3) Therefore Avestan is a different language, that's older than Sanskrit4) QED

Are there features in "Avestan" that makes linguists believe that "Avestan" is older? Like older phonetic forms, palatalization etc? Reason I ask is that, based on Talageri's work, Avesta is contemporaneous with the later-books of Rig Veda & with Atharva Veda.

Talageri's work is unnecessary. Jatindra Mohan Chaterji and Parsi sources I have read are clear that Atharva Veda and Parsi Gathas are from a common source.

Phonology is a load of crock as applied by linguists because they arbitrarily say some sounds are older.Even if Talageri makes phonological arguments I can only compliment him for taking the battle to the other side using the same fakeological methods used by linguists to create languages and dates for them That apart - how can you talk about phonology of a language that existed 2500 years before any available text of which only 25% now available and in Persian, Sanskrit and Gujarati. Everything is pure guesswork. The Parsis speak Gujarati now. They used to speak "Old Persian" (like Sanskrit) at the time of Darius (Behistun) in Iran. Earlier than that they had a language. It was never called Avestan. So where did the name Avestan come from? I can explain that but will omit that bit now.

There is no language called Avestan other than that cooked up by linguists. There was a Zoroastrian language and anyone who hears old Gathas and also knows the Vedas or Sanskrit can instantly see the similarity. Once you cook up a language from modern texts by removing some sounds or cooking up new sounds that "must have existed" anything is possible. You can declare it older, younger yet to come in future or whatever. The gathas as heard today have not been preserved like Vedas with no sound change. They could have been Sanskrit only. Iran and Northwest India were one contiguous civilization with genetic links (M 420 and Z93) and cultural links up to Andronovo, BMAC and Syria and Israel

Talking about age of Avestan is a bogey. Avestan is not a basis for any AIT/OIT argument. A fictitious cooked up language cannot be used to describe our history. Avestan should not be used in any argument in this connection because it is fiction cooked up to suit AIT and is not supported by any fact outside of linguistic cookery. The history of the Zoroastrians, Iranians or Indians or Greeks does not include the word Avesta or Avestan anywhere. It is totally and completely cooked up by cunning linguists. The history of the Zoroastrians, Iranians or Indians can be described without any reference to any Avestan language. That fake language, like Hittite is needed only for AIT.

Can Behishtun inscription of Darius be understood as a prakrit? What linguistic tests must be positive for that language to be termed as a Sanskrit derived Prakrit?

peter wrote:Can Behishtun inscription of Darius be understood as a prakrit? What linguistic tests must be positive for that language to be termed as a Sanskrit derived Prakrit?

I may be the wrong person to answer this question which is IMO a good question.

However - must point out that unless someone does a syllable for syllable reworking of the Behistun inscriptions for accuracy in pronuncoation it would be as wrong to work with Western impressions of "Old Persian" from behistun as it is to work with Western cookery of Avestan.

A British army guy called Rawlinson who had learned Sanskrit played a key role in translating the work. How accurately it was done and what errors could have crept in is unknown to Indians because we have not produced as many multilingual scholars from 1800 as the West (or even Britain) has done. Be that as it may the translation has ended up looking close to Sanskrit and is meaningful.

I am not sure of the definition of Prakrit. What is a Prakrit. What would qualify a language to be defined as a Prakrit? Google search defines it as

ancient or medieval vernacular dialects of north and central India which existed alongside or were derived from Sanskrit.

I find modern Hindi and Bengali as being derived from Sanskrit and close to Sanskrit. Why are they not called prakrit? is it because they are not in parallel with spoken Sanskrit? Or is someone talking about mumbojumbo fakophono "sound change"

I find modern Hindi and Bengali as being derived from Sanskrit and close to Sanskrit. Why are they not called prakrit? is it because they are not in parallel with spoken Sanskrit? Or is someone talking about mumbojumbo fakophono "sound change"

For what it is worth....

Marathi is one of the youngest languages derived from Sanskrit (and as a result very rich in Sanskrit words. It does have words from Portuguese, Persian (!), Kannada and few others).

Grammatically there is little difference between the languages of the Avesta and the Vedas. Both languages underwent systematic phonetic change. However, according to Thomas-Burrow, in his book, The Sanskrit Language

It is quite possible to find verses in the oldest portion of the Avesta, which simply by phonetic substitutions according to established laws can be turned into intelligible Sanskrit.

The languages of the Avesta and the Vedas shared some vocabulary that is not shared with the other Indo-European languages.

The "Avesta" itself was obtained by looking at texts that were written 2500 years after the original language, and by listening to Parsi priests chanting their stuff 3000 or more years after the originals were composed. How easily can originals be discovered under such circumstances?

In fact, the oldest Avestan is so similar to the oldest Sanskrit that you can translate text in one language to another by applying few phonological changes.

Linguists cooked up a language called Avestan and assumed "sound changes". After making all those assumptions they ended up with a language that was very similar to Sanskrit, which required a few more sound changes to make it Sanskrit. How do these Einsteins know that those few sound changes that are now needed to make "Avestan" into Sanskrit indeed occurred over of the course 2500 years and the two languages were actually just one language in 1000 BC or earlier?

Linguists, convinced that language came from elsewhere "needed" different languages to prove their theory. They started with the premise that a language came from somewhere else and then proceeded to cook up the necessary "evidence" for that. These mofos nowadays don't even bat an eyelid when publishing this kind of nonsensical stuff.

Someone asked Nilesh for the parts of Jatindra Mohan Chaterji's text that they should read. I think Nilesh's interest is in dates, but I would suggest simplt reading the preface.

Chaterji points out (in his book) that the Parsi holy book was the Chhand Upastha. Now a Frenchman called Aquetil du Perron spent time in Gujarat with Parsi priests and later went and wrote a translation of the Parsi holy book and called it "Zend Avesta" . Guess how a Frenchman would pronounce "Zend"? du Perron's work was rejected until someone found the 13 century record of a 10th century Persian text written by a Parsi Sanskrit scholar (Neryosang Dhaval) on which linguists did their reconstructions, creating a language called "Avestan" from the name "Zend Avesta"

These linguists created a land called Avesta from the French name of a book and created people called Avestans, just like they created people called Aryans from the word "Arya" .

shiv wrote: Guess how a Frenchman would pronounce "Zend"? du Perron's work was rejected until someone found the 13 century record of a 10th century Persian text written by a Parsi Sanskrit scholar (Neryosang Dhaval) on which linguists did their reconstructions, creating a language called "Avestan" from the name "Zend Avesta"

These linguists created a land called Avesta from the French name of a book and created people called Avestans, just like they created people called Aryans from the word "Arya" .

All the colonial historians have the same record. This concoction of people, language and history was targetted towards the people in Europe understand this part of the world. The European elite, universities and monarchies read these historians and imagined the people of the east. This continued in the 20th century and in case of Indian subcontinent the baggage of sociology, indology narratives continued to the present day universities. Indian leftist historians took it from where it was left before and expanded it to the minds of the new Indian generation.

shiv wrote:These linguists created a land called Avesta from the French name of a book and created people called Avestans, just like they created people called Aryans from the word "Arya" .

All the colonial historians have the same record. This concoction of people, language and history was targeted towards the people in Europe understand this part of the world.

This is a good summary of what Edward Said (an Egyptian by birth) writes in his rather difficult to read book "Orientalism"

The "Orient" was imagined to be in a particular way and all so called scholarly writings about the Orient were made to fit into the mould of what the Orient was supposed to be like for Europe rather than trying to understand or describe reality from the viewpoint of the people in India or other parts of the Orient,

For us 20th and 21st century Indians who have been brought up to view the scholarly writings of Europe as the last word. the zenith of truth and neutrality - it causes great discomfort and cognitive dissonance to hear that the pillars of our learning - the European greats who gave us the railways and telephones could possibly have been biased freaks. But that is the truth and this has continued into the 1900s and this era as well.

Indians, especially English educated Indians laugh and mock other Indians because we too see our own people as the oriental caricature that was made out of us by European orientalism

please do finish your book! I am sure it would be very valuable in putting some sense into the "AIT" debate.

Thanks Rajesh. Every time I start editing my work - I feel dissatisfied with the completeness of some things and am simply trying to learn more. And in the meantime a lot of new genetics material has appeared - but that is less of a problem - that can be included fairly easily.

I would like to put in more work showing up the linguists who have cooked up things. the fact that they were racist is easy to show - there is plenty of material, but what linguists have done is to classify sounds and speech into expressions like "palatal" and "glottal" etc. They have added two layers of obfuscation over and above this by making coded symbols like h* (or *h?) for some sounds. But even though sound recording technology has been available for over 50 years to the general population there are virtually no "linguistics" resources where linguists have made vinyl records, tapes or CD of what they mean when they say "palatal" or "glottal". There are only anatomical descriptions - tongue is up, tongue is down, tongue is behind teeth etc. This is beyond failure - it is negligence or deliberate obfuscation.

We in India know how people can mispronounce words. We know how the Westerner can rarely produce the sound of an Indian language properly. 1960s Hindi movies had the white man who would speak Hindi with a gora accent. We laugh at south Indians mispronouncing Hindi and in the south people are contemptuous of the Hindi speaker being unable to produce certain sounds. We all get a kick out of the way the Bengali speaks. Yet we accept, like naive morons the "sound change" descriptions that linguists tell us happened 2000 or 3000 years ago. And we mug up the shit they write and say 'Witzel says that this sound is older and that word underwent sound change".

This sound change business is such great fakeology that I must find a way of including it convincingly and understandably. Of course sound change occurs - I will give examples below, but saying that this is older and that comes later may be complete bullshit.

For example: "Gudgaon" is an example of sound change from Gurugram. But both are concurrent. "Karnatak" is an example of North Indian sound change from the original "Karnataka" Both are concurrent. It is not as though one has disappeared and the other continues. Trichy is a sound change corruption of Thiru-chira-palli. Hide-rah-bad and Haider-ah-bahd are two different pronunciations of Hyderabad. Linguists claim that there are "satem" and "centum" languages depending on whether they pronounce "ch" as "ka" or as "sa". But in Tamil some people pronounce the word for cooked rice as "chor" and others as "sore". So is Tamil a satem language or a centum language?

Many linguists have themselves lamented the way in which other linguists make up a new linguistic rule every time they need to explain something and then they make up a rule for exceptions. And all these "rules' get written down in books. Ask a man like Witzel to actually pronounce the words he writes about and he will likely fail. Phonology is about sounds and in the absence of sounds mistakes will occur. Long long ago the composers of the Vedas knew that the Vedas were about sounds and were meant to be chanted not written. How come phonological studies are written and not transmitted as sound bytes?

But when you take texts from 2500 or 3000 years ago and then start saying x is a sound change from y and y was older - you could well be bullshitting. But entire new languages like "Hittite" and "Avestan" have been cooked up - dictionaries and all by this method. These edifices will hve to be shown up as the fakeology they represent in order to really kill AIT.

please do finish your book! I am sure it would be very valuable in putting some sense into the "AIT" debate.

Thanks Rajesh. Every time I start editing my work - I feel dissatisfied with the completeness of some things and am simply trying to learn more. And in the meantime a lot of new genetics material has appeared - but that is less of a problem - that can be included fairly easily.

I would like to put in more work showing up the linguists who have cooked up things. the fact that they were racist is easy to show - there is plenty of material, but what linguists have done is to classify sounds and speech into expressions like "palatal" and "glottal" etc. They have added two layers of obfuscation over and above this by making coded symbols like h* (or *h?) for some sounds. But even though sound recording technology has been available for over 50 years to the general population there are virtually no "linguistics" resources where linguists have made vinyl records, tapes or CD of what they mean when they say "palatal" or "glottal". There are only anatomical descriptions - tongue is up, tongue is down, tongue is behind teeth etc. This is beyond failure - it is negligence or deliberate obfuscation.

We in India know how people can mispronounce words. We know how the Westerner can rarely produce the sound of an Indian language properly. 1960s Hindi movies had the white man who would speak Hindi with a gora accent. We laugh at south Indians mispronouncing Hindi and in the south people are contemptuous of the Hindi speaker being unable to produce certain sounds. We all get a kick out of the way the Bengali speaks. Yet we accept, like naive morons the "sound change" descriptions that linguists tell us happened 2000 or 3000 years ago. And we mug up the shit they write and say 'Witzel says that this sound is older and that word underwent sound change".

This sound change business is such great fakeology that I must find a way of including it convincingly and understandably. Of course sound change occurs - I will give examples below, but saying that this is older and that comes later may be complete bullshit.

For example: "Gudgaon" is an example of sound change from Gurugram. But both are concurrent. "Karnatak" is an example of North Indian sound change from the original "Karnataka" Both are concurrent. It is not as though one has disappeared and the other continues. Trichy is a sound change corruption of Thiru-chira-palli. Hide-rah-bad and Haider-ah-bahd are two different pronunciations of Hyderabad. Linguists claim that there are "satem" and "centum" languages depending on whether they pronounce "ch" as "ka" or as "sa". But in Tamil some people pronounce the word for cooked rice as "chor" and others as "sore". So is Tamil a satem language or a centum language?

Many linguists have themselves lamented the way in which other linguists make up a new linguistic rule every time they need to explain something and then they make up a rule for exceptions. And all these "rules' get written down in books. Ask a man like Witzel to actually pronounce the words he writes about and he will likely fail. Phonology is about sounds and in the absence of sounds mistakes will occur. Long long ago the composers of the Vedas knew that the Vedas were about sounds and were meant to be chanted not written. How come phonological studies are written and not transmitted as sound bytes?

But when you take texts from 2500 or 3000 years ago and then start saying x is a sound change from y and y was older - you could well be bullshitting. But entire new languages like "Hittite" and "Avestan" have been cooked up - dictionaries and all by this method. These edifices will hve to be shown up as the fakeology they represent in order to really kill AIT.

Good points. The language mirror has to be shown. How i agree is the key.

Your example on Tamil chor, sore is intriguing. Do you know more such examples? How about in Kannada?

peter wrote:Your example on Tamil chor, sore is intriguing. Do you know more such examples? How about in Kannada?

The name for guava: some will say "seebekayi". Others say "chepekayi". That aside there is, even today in Gujarat an area where people say "ha" instead of "sa" just like Sindhu/Indu , saptaah/haphta and sept/hept. These are concurrent, not older/less old.

These people have cooked up a PIE word that they claim existed 5000 years ago and are now speaking that word and saying how it became modern I tell ya - these fellows have no scruples, scholarship or accountability

peter wrote:Your example on Tamil chor, sore is intriguing. Do you know more such examples? How about in Kannada?

The name for guava: some will say "seebekayi". Others say "chepekayi". That aside there is, even today in Gujarat an area where people say "ha" instead of "sa" just like Sindhu/Indu , saptaah/haphta and sept/hept. These are concurrent, not older/less old.

In Sanskrit the word for six and modern hindi the words start with "sh" and "chha" respectively. In this case clearly sanskrit (Rg Vedic) word is older but no one knows how the common people spoke the number six in the rigvedic time.

Do you know how it is spoken in old tamil especially the tolkappiyam? How are the numerals 0-9 pronounced in tolkappiyam?

A short history of the Aryan Invasion Theory for those people who don't know or have forgotten from a useful source that I had downloaded in 2012

Since ancient times people had noticed that there were a lot of similaritiesamong European languages. But it wasn't until the 16th century, whenEuropeans began studying the Indian language Sanskrit, that scholarsrealized this similarity extended to several Asian languages as well.

The classic example was the word "father," which was echoed by vater in German,pater in Latin, and pitar- in Sanskrit.In 1786 the British orientalist William Jones suggested what today is anaccepted fact, namely that all the languages were descended from a commonsource, of which only traces now remain. In the 1800s the philologist MaxMueller gave this protolanguage a name: Aryan, a name believed to have beenused by various peoples living in the vicinity of Persia, modern Iran.It seemed reasonable that the Aryan language had originated with a single Aryan tribe, or in the parlance of the day, an Aryan race. Language scholars occupied themselves for the next hundred years trying to determine wherethis tribe had lived and what they had looked like.

At first it was assumed thatthe Aryans were Asians, but nationalistic European scholars found this hardto swallow and began scrounging for evidence that the Aryans had originatedin Europe.German scholars were particularly energetic in this regard and persuadedthemselves that the Aryans were a tall, blond, "dolichocephalic" (long-headed) people whom today we would call Nordic. The Germans and theirsupporters believed the blond Aryans had originally lived by the shore of theBaltic Sea and had spread their language and culture throughout the rest ofEurope and parts of Asia. The fact that most speakers of Aryan languagesdidn't look at all Nordic they explained away by saying the original blonds hadlong since been submerged in the gene pool, and they dug out all sorts ofreferences to fair-haired or fair-complected heroes, heroines, or deities in theHomeric ballads and other ancient texts.

These were the now-lost Aryans, they argued, bringing the gift of civilization to the shlubs.The idea that the blond Aryans were a superior race was first raised explicitlyin 1853 by one Joseph Arthur, comte de Gobineau. De Gobineau was arespected ethnologist but also an unabashed racist, who argued in all seriousness that the Aryan races would prosper as long as they didn't allow themselves to be tainted by mixing with black and yellow peoples. De Gobineau's ideas were popular and are said to have influenced Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Stripped of the scholarly trappings, Aryanism soon filtered down to the beer halls and eventually became one ofthe central tenets of Nazism. By then it had shed any linguistic significance; Hitler justified his persecution of the Slavs on the grounds that they were racially inferior, although they spoke Aryan languages.

After World War II nobody wanted to have anything to do with Aryans and the term was dropped in favor of "Indo-European." But the search for the originalAryans/Indo-Europeans wasn't completely abandoned. The leading candidate at the moment, I gather, is the "kurgan" people of what is now south Russia,so named because they built mounds called kurgans. From 4000 to 3000 BC,some researchers believe, they migrated in all directions, bringing theirlanguage with them. Not much is known about them, although there is archeological evidence that they were tall. But blond hair, blue eyes? Only their hairdressers knew for sure, and they didn't tell.